Spiritual Communities minus the fanaticism

"In the near future, every person will arise to the responsibility of independently seeking the truth, reading, studying, meditating and praying for their own spiritual development. There will be spiritual teachers, but not people who are elevated to the point of being 'the reverend,' or 'the rabbi' or 'the Imam,' of for that matter 'the Dalai Lama.'

"If one wants to identify as a Christian or Jew or Buddhist or what have you, that will be fine. But the clergy will be replaced by lay-people, sharing. Societies will evolve around seeking spiritual truth and experiencing spiritual reality, and looking to the teachings of the entire knowledge of spiritual teachers -- of all the spiritual teachers. They will assemble in counsels and assemblies where there will be no central priest or reverend in that community, but they will rotate or take turns and share as a group.

"Certainly people of greater capacity or experience might teach or share with others. This will always be the case. We will always have teachers. But the idea that there will be a paid professional priesthood: The time for that is over. It is over because it has been abused, and because humans have the capacity now to read, and to investigate truth on their own. It is actually very corrupting to have some other person interpret for you the meaning of truth; we can share out truth with one another, but ultimately we make the truth our own, in our own way....

"Now, this doesn't mean that there won't be spiritual communities or spiritual organizations or religions. But they will be greatly changed, because if they are genuinely pursuing enlightenment and spirituality -as opposed to amassing power and controlling people -they will be looking to empower everyone spiritually....

"The things that today pass as big 'religious issues,' will be changed and refocused to the actual purpose that all of the great prophets, Avatars and spiritual teachers came here to give us: the knowledge of the existence of a divine Being, and the ability for people to pray to and meditate within this divinity and realize that in their lives.

"The corruption of religion is intimately related to both the masses giving up their spiritual power and a priesthood that is prone to abusing power.

"And no matter how many fine people there may be in the priesthood, there are always those who go into a demagogic mode--who can then affect weaker minds and bring them under their control, whether it is Jim Jones or someone who is trying to induce a jihad or inquisition.

"This kind of fanaticism and thinking will be exposed for what it is, and retired, just like the thinking about nationalities or ideologies requiring massive warfare and destruction will be retired. And it will be retired permanently.

"Transformed, truth-seeking religious groups will have a deep and abiding respect for others. People will discover as time goes on that truth is one --and the religious differences are unimportant or based on falsehood, misinterpretations or perversions of the original spiritual teachings.

"We will eventually evolve a universal spirituality. People are simply not going to be able to hold on to the chauvinism of this sect versus that sect if they are awake. Because if they are awake, they are going to realize that there is really no difference at all --that the Light is the same in every lantern no matter what the lantern may have been externally; whether it was Buddha or Krishna or Christ or Mohammed or any other Manifestation of Divinity. People will start searching for that Light, and they are not going to be separated by hatred and divisions due to the form of the lantern."